GMD Poll: Top Ten Films of 2019
- Thread starter no country for old wainds
- Start date
challenge_everything
Active Member
10. Deadwood – Daniel Minahan
Like having a cup of fucking tea with some cunts you’ve known your whole life.
9. Joker – Todd Phillips
Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver probably don’t get enough credit for just how hard this movie would have been to write: a character study that provides a plausible backstory of trauma and mental illness, yet still inevitably has to end with the creation of an exaggerated comic book villain. Making Arthur Fleck sympathetic yet not-too-much-so. Making sense of his motivations, whilst not doing so uncritically. Doing all of the above with the shadow of Heath Ledger’s performance looming over it. There is great skill involved here, and frankly I’d rate it higher if it weren’t for the Scorsese worship factor.
8. Uncut Gems – Safdie brothers
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie on speed. An exhausting watch – and not something I can particularly relate to – but it is undeniably compelling watching the flailings of Howard Ratner, wheeling, dealing and doubling down on every desperate gambit. Credit to the Safdies who wring every drop of sweat out of the rag.
7. Monos – Alejandro Landes
Probably cliché, but Apocalypse Now meets Lord of the Flies is not a bad description. A group of Colombian child soldiers guard an American hostage on a desolate mountaintop. Have they really been tasked with the job by a FARC-like guerrilla organisation, or are they just playing war? The film becomes less interesting as the mystery subsides but it’s an enjoyable acid-war movie while it lasts.
6. Midsommar – Ari Aster
Aster again taps into his wellspring of banal horror: this time it’s loveless relationships and the apathy of youth. It also manages to skewer gap year mentality, gawking cultural tourists and academic phoneyism along the way. It might borrow heavily from The Wicker Man but there’s enough striking imagery, genuinely disconcerting moments and black humour for Midsommar to endure as one of the better entries in the folk-horror canon.
5. Marriage Story – Noah Baumbach
Feels as real as any divorce drama I’ve ever seen. Both parties are generally well-intentioned, but their divergent lifestyles and goals are impossible to reconcile. The solution is nothing more and nothing less than shared pain.
4. Dragged Across Concrete - S Craig Zahler
Another elegy to a dying form of masculinity by S Craig Zahler. I love his style; the crisp shots and the slow, deliberate takes that ratchet the tension in a way most can’t achieve. Here he’s in the territory of JP Melville in his tale of two suspended cops resorting to desperate measures. The dialogue is dryly funny, but I can’t help but wish he went full on down the Melville path by making an almost silent movie – the reason being Mel Gibson (in a career best performance) conveys so much meaning in a furrowed brow.
3. Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) – Celine Sciamma
Despite the obvious self-consciousness of being a period film without a single male character, this is not overwrought feminism, just a beautifully understated romance told with economy of dialogue.
2. The Nightingale – Jennifer Kent
Irish convict Clare teams up with Aboriginal tracker Mangana to hunt down a group of English soldiers trekking across an untamed Tasmania. Babadook director Kent resists easy rapprochements between Clare and Mangana, instead finding commonality in their respective lost languages and love of song. The violence is brutal but not glorified - as Clare's motivation drains away after partaking in that violence, it feels sufficiently real. The soldiers,meanwhile, exemplify the incongruity of English colonialism; comically impotent in the face of the Australian wilderness, yet shockingly cruel in manifesting their sense of cultural superiority.
1. Parasite – Bong Joon Ho
Who is the parasite? The rich who systemically exploit the working classes, or the poor who look for every angle to feed off the scraps of the wealthy? The power to drop jaws in a movie theatre is an increasingly rare skill and for that alone Bong Joon-Ho deserves all the accolades, but Parasite is much more than shock value or gotcha twists. Scalpel sharp satire, relentless narrative drive, layers of meaning to unpick and a director at the peak of his formidable powers.
Technically 2019, but only released here in 2020, and may feature in the next annual list:
Young Ahmed (Dardenne bros), Motherless Brooklyn (Edward Norton)
Like having a cup of fucking tea with some cunts you’ve known your whole life.
9. Joker – Todd Phillips
Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver probably don’t get enough credit for just how hard this movie would have been to write: a character study that provides a plausible backstory of trauma and mental illness, yet still inevitably has to end with the creation of an exaggerated comic book villain. Making Arthur Fleck sympathetic yet not-too-much-so. Making sense of his motivations, whilst not doing so uncritically. Doing all of the above with the shadow of Heath Ledger’s performance looming over it. There is great skill involved here, and frankly I’d rate it higher if it weren’t for the Scorsese worship factor.
8. Uncut Gems – Safdie brothers
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie on speed. An exhausting watch – and not something I can particularly relate to – but it is undeniably compelling watching the flailings of Howard Ratner, wheeling, dealing and doubling down on every desperate gambit. Credit to the Safdies who wring every drop of sweat out of the rag.
7. Monos – Alejandro Landes
Probably cliché, but Apocalypse Now meets Lord of the Flies is not a bad description. A group of Colombian child soldiers guard an American hostage on a desolate mountaintop. Have they really been tasked with the job by a FARC-like guerrilla organisation, or are they just playing war? The film becomes less interesting as the mystery subsides but it’s an enjoyable acid-war movie while it lasts.
6. Midsommar – Ari Aster
Aster again taps into his wellspring of banal horror: this time it’s loveless relationships and the apathy of youth. It also manages to skewer gap year mentality, gawking cultural tourists and academic phoneyism along the way. It might borrow heavily from The Wicker Man but there’s enough striking imagery, genuinely disconcerting moments and black humour for Midsommar to endure as one of the better entries in the folk-horror canon.
5. Marriage Story – Noah Baumbach
Feels as real as any divorce drama I’ve ever seen. Both parties are generally well-intentioned, but their divergent lifestyles and goals are impossible to reconcile. The solution is nothing more and nothing less than shared pain.
4. Dragged Across Concrete - S Craig Zahler
Another elegy to a dying form of masculinity by S Craig Zahler. I love his style; the crisp shots and the slow, deliberate takes that ratchet the tension in a way most can’t achieve. Here he’s in the territory of JP Melville in his tale of two suspended cops resorting to desperate measures. The dialogue is dryly funny, but I can’t help but wish he went full on down the Melville path by making an almost silent movie – the reason being Mel Gibson (in a career best performance) conveys so much meaning in a furrowed brow.
3. Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) – Celine Sciamma
Despite the obvious self-consciousness of being a period film without a single male character, this is not overwrought feminism, just a beautifully understated romance told with economy of dialogue.
2. The Nightingale – Jennifer Kent
Irish convict Clare teams up with Aboriginal tracker Mangana to hunt down a group of English soldiers trekking across an untamed Tasmania. Babadook director Kent resists easy rapprochements between Clare and Mangana, instead finding commonality in their respective lost languages and love of song. The violence is brutal but not glorified - as Clare's motivation drains away after partaking in that violence, it feels sufficiently real. The soldiers,meanwhile, exemplify the incongruity of English colonialism; comically impotent in the face of the Australian wilderness, yet shockingly cruel in manifesting their sense of cultural superiority.
1. Parasite – Bong Joon Ho
Who is the parasite? The rich who systemically exploit the working classes, or the poor who look for every angle to feed off the scraps of the wealthy? The power to drop jaws in a movie theatre is an increasingly rare skill and for that alone Bong Joon-Ho deserves all the accolades, but Parasite is much more than shock value or gotcha twists. Scalpel sharp satire, relentless narrative drive, layers of meaning to unpick and a director at the peak of his formidable powers.
Technically 2019, but only released here in 2020, and may feature in the next annual list:
Young Ahmed (Dardenne bros), Motherless Brooklyn (Edward Norton)
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Interesting to see The Nightingale at such a lofty position in your list. I personally found it in many respects unconvincing and one dimensional, while also being a little too conventional for me considering the paths it could have gone with such intense subject matter.
For one most of the villains were basically cartoonish brutes with no discernible motivation other than to represent modern perceptions of colonialism and all its evils. Fair enough I suppose, but I can get the same thing on Twitter.
For one most of the villains were basically cartoonish brutes with no discernible motivation other than to represent modern perceptions of colonialism and all its evils. Fair enough I suppose, but I can get the same thing on Twitter.
Last edited:
challenge_everything
Active Member
I like that it underplayed its hand. Not sure what you consider too conventional, but for what starts out as a fairly generic rape/revenge movie, it baulks quite early on at retributional violence and takes on buddy/road movie elements, identity themes etc.
Yes the villains were brutish but not sure that equals cartoonish or unrealistic? I mean, this is a large part of Australia's history, English soldiers who were resentful at being sent to a harsh place at the arse-end of the world, bored, drunk, and therefore take their frustrations out of those they considered inferior ie Aboriginals and to a lesser extent the Irish. There's plenty of massacres in the history books of Australia that didn't have any discernible motivation. It's revealing, I think, that the whole reason of the overland trek to Launceston in the movie is all so Sgt Hawkins can get his promotion.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
I was more referring to the motivations for the evil acts they carry out throughout the film. I just didn't buy it or believe it, which is usually fine if the film is just going for sadism, horror or exploitation, but in the context of a film attempting some level of historicity I thought it fell short of character development I could really sink my teeth into. Imagine if Das Boot for example had portrayed the Nazi crewman in a similar way?
By conventional I mean as you say, it underplayed its hand. When I thought it might get into some really intense or uncomfortable territory, it pulled back. You describe that as a positive but to me it made the film reek of a kind of hesitancy, which I don't think helps with this kind of material. I've read interviews with the director and she's very much a white guilt liberal and I think it shows in how she handled the subject matter. She even said herself she almost didn't direct the film because she didn't think it was her place as a privileged white woman to tell this story, and I think this lack of confidence acted as a roadblock for the film being closer to a masterpiece, and in the end turned out to be more of a hollow cathartic experience for liberals and their relationship with their country and its history.
I thought the casting was perfect though, and the cinematography at times was amazing and immense (such a location to work with!), don't want to give the impression I hated it. The final act was so good it almost made up for everything I found annoying about it, and the general anti-Britbong vibe was the cherry on top.
By conventional I mean as you say, it underplayed its hand. When I thought it might get into some really intense or uncomfortable territory, it pulled back. You describe that as a positive but to me it made the film reek of a kind of hesitancy, which I don't think helps with this kind of material. I've read interviews with the director and she's very much a white guilt liberal and I think it shows in how she handled the subject matter. She even said herself she almost didn't direct the film because she didn't think it was her place as a privileged white woman to tell this story, and I think this lack of confidence acted as a roadblock for the film being closer to a masterpiece, and in the end turned out to be more of a hollow cathartic experience for liberals and their relationship with their country and its history.
I thought the casting was perfect though, and the cinematography at times was amazing and immense (such a location to work with!), don't want to give the impression I hated it. The final act was so good it almost made up for everything I found annoying about it, and the general anti-Britbong vibe was the cherry on top.
challenge_everything
Active Member
Not sure Das Boot with the rigors of German discipline is really an apt analogy - this is more of an Apocalypse Now scenario isn't it? I don't recall much attention being given to Kurtz's motivation. And it's historical fact that soldiers in many regiments were ordered to shoot Aboriginals - it was like shooting rabbits and didn't require any particular motivation. That obviously wasn't shown in the movie but it is the implicit context.
I understand where's you're coming from, but what would you have done differently (leaving aside developing the villains' motivations)? Presuming you wouldn't have turned it into a pure horror/exploitation/revenge flick?
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
I probably could come up with a better comparison, but it still applies to my specific problem with how factions we all generally agree were evil or unjust are depicted in cinema. It's almost too obvious that the director wanted to project her audience/herself onto the two protagonists and left the colonial forces as these completely alien unrelatable inhuman machines of rape and murder. Again, fair enough, I'm aware of the history, but those kinds of dynamics tend to feel like propaganda to me, like I'm being preached to.
Especially if the film is character-driven, and the character development is entirely one-sided both politically and in terms of storytelling devices. It's like, is the only message that colonialism was a horror show? I already knew that, I guess I wanted to be challenged in some way.
Tough question, it's hard to know what I would change or do differently. I might rewatch it soon since I have the DVD and think more on that, and what my issues are even more specifically than I've tried to articulate here. I know I definitely felt like it should have been more graphic in regards to what it actually put on the screen, rather than what was left implied off camera, but that might just be the extremist in me talking.
TechnicalBarbarity
Poser Disposer
@no country for old wainds hey when do you plan on wrapping this up? I'm gonna try to get at least a few more movies in by next week.
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,696
- 9,669
- 113
i'll be posting my list in the next day or two but i won't close it until everyone who wants to post a list has done. if there's anyone else just let me know!
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
@RadicalThrasher @TechnicalBarbarity if you dudes have Netflix you really gotta check out Avengement. 
RadicalThrasher
Active Member
@RadicalThrasher @TechnicalBarbarity if you dudes have Netflix you really gotta check out Avengement.
What is it? Never heard of it
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Tagged you right after I watched it, in a post on the previous page. Fucking rules man.
@Oblivious Maximus have you seen Pedro Almodóvar's latest yet?
RadicalThrasher
Active Member
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Oblivious Maximus
I am the worm
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,696
- 9,669
- 113
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,696
- 9,669
- 113
25) The White Storm 2: Drug Lords (Dir. Herman Yau)
for a long while now asian action movies have largely been more ruthless, uninhibited and angry than their western counterparts, and this covertly scornful riff on The Dark Knight courtesy of herman yau (Ebola Syndrome) is no different. it's a pleasure seeing andy lau as a duterte-sympathising batman and louis motherfuckin’ koo in the joker role, but the unchecked, destructive machismo of their crowning chase scene colours the preceding power games a remarkably ugly hue. (no need to have seen the first film--like a lot of asian sequels this one's only related thematically, not narratively).
24) Hotel by the River (Dir. Hong Sang-Soo)
hong has entered a particularly bleak, self-excoriating phase off the back of his high profile affair, and given it was followed by the first full year not to have a hong premiere since 2007, i wonder if this direct confrontation with mortality represents some kind of endpoint. poet, dreamer and aesthete, drunkard, absent parent and possibly the "worst person in the world"--it goes without saying that this is another hong stand-in, and his fate is treated with an appropriate ambivalence, not without its snowy pathos but also seeming the logical culmination of the man's worst qualities. the final shot is pointed, the film's equivalent of the taxi shot in The Day After or the entirety of On the Beach at Night Alone, suggesting that while the old man is unable to imagine anyone but himself as the protagonist of this story, and the love interest doesn't even warrant a presence, maybe it's kim min-hee who's more worthy of our interest and compassion.
23) Relaxer (Dir. Joel Potrykus)
a gross single-setting slacker comedy about a pathologically inert wastrel desperate to beat billy mitchell’s fraudulent pacman world record before the y2k apocalypse, this is potrykus' retardo The Exterminating Angel (with refs to Rear Window, Videodrome, Robinson Crusoe etc) and an ideal vehicle for burge, who continues to emerge as an anti-buster keaton for the couch potato era. potrykus makes degenerate manchild movies of the best kind, the line always blurred between tribute and critique.
22) Bait (Dir. Mark Jenkin)
“shit pub anyways. don’t even play winner stays on no more.” a scratched up DIY oddity about the gentrification of a cornish fishing village shot on 16mm with a handcranked vintage camera, like if ben rivers made a melodrama in the visual language of griffith and eisenstein but with a droll, rude humor that could only come from working class britain. it's really fun and makes experimental filmmaking seem as salt-of-the-earth as rigging a boat for the day’s catch.
21) High Flying Bird (Dir. Steven Soderbergh)
if this movie were a current basketball team it’d be the rockets, but i’m a rockets fan. nobody is making movies more sterile, transactional and defiantly digital, mirroring the structures and aesthetics of the system he’s critiquing with a cold precision that makes even the likes of mann and johnnie to seem antiquated. dude is so fucking smart--some might say to a fault--but the twist confirms that he's still making romantic heist movies, only now driven exclusively by political fury and sorrow.
20) High Life (Dir. Claire Denis)
even by denis' standards this film is positively fertile, exploring matters of sexuality, reproduction, rape and even incest amongst the occupants of a phallic/fetal ship adrift in an unending womb full of tantalising black holes. a fucked up adam and eve story (complete with its own little garden of eden) with the final line "shall we?" potentially a callback to the very first line "taboo", an invitation to transgress in a way that might actually be truer to the mission's original objectives of exploring and transcending boundaries.
19) The Art of Self-Defense (Dir. Riley Stearns)
AKA The Killing of a Sacred Dachshund or a deadpan Fight Club. the third act and its tidy denouement make stearns' deficiencies abundantly clear, but i just can't resist all these exquisitely-pitched lanthimosy shenanigans enough to rank it objectively. easily one of the funniest movies of the last couple years.
18) The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (Dir. Kathleen Hepburn, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers)
an intimate pseudo-single take two-hander covering the immediate aftermath of an indigenous woman’s domestic abuse and a wealthier, “whiter” indigenous woman’s attempt to help. wise, unflinching, unresolved filmmaking, sidestepping the traps these premises usually fall into; i was so sure a misguided climactic confrontation or reconciliation over a certain plot point was coming that i near whooped with delight when the credits rolled. no backstories, no sugarcoating, no bullshit. thing is perfectly judged, catch it on netflix.
17) The Plagiarists (Dir. 'Peter Parlow')
attributed to a fictitious director, this hilarious and ingenious meta-comedy buries into the pomo landscape in ways few films dare, formalising the increasingly slippery nature of concepts like "authenticity", "originality" and "intellectual property" through what at first glance seems a classic american indie set-up about a pretentious, bickering white couple suffering a flat in the middle of nowhere. it's a real tricky film to get a handle on in the moment, thrillingly unstable as it constantly evaluates and reevaluates itself. if "post-mumblecore" wasn't a thing already, it is now.
16) Doctor Sleep (Dir. Mike Flanagan)
for all its messiness (i’d offer that mapping the terrain of the adolescent mind requires some play amongst the work) and a slightly vanilla lead performance (not that it isn't affectingly pensive, but i wish i really believed in his potential to follow in his father's footsteps), a smart, deeply felt adaptation which understands that danny’s redemption from generational trauma doubles as a reconciliation between king’s story and kubrick’s brutal bastardisation, deliberately thawing the latter against the wishes of fanboys everywhere. there's a moving symmetry between the way this ends and king's remarkable response to their screening: "you've warmed my feelings toward the kubrick film."
15) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Dir. Quentin Tarantino)
almost a shame he’s making one more, 'cause this plays like a swansong and ends on his most sublime and definitive image: a hushed ascent into hollywood heaven which illustrates how, like any zealot, he’s forever chasing ghosts. it’s worst when he’s blaming the loss of his rosebud on the rise of liberal resentment, this tearing down of great values and institutions of the past due to their ‘problematic’ baggage, but thankfully the love and grief mostly shine through the bitterness.
14) Knife + Heart (Dir. Yann Gonzalez)
could easily be called head + heart for how it achieves the best of both worlds, imbuing its images with an eroticism and mysticism rarely seen since the heyday of giallo and euro-horror while also having enough critical distance to contextualise them, coax out meaning from the sensory overload. it never feels like boring, snooty academic deconstruction nor slavish homage but rather a new and thoroughly queer voice in the conversation.
13) Glass (Dir. M. Night Shyalaman)
my review of Bestaire seven years ago:
'i'm reminded of Like Someone In Love another claustrophobic film presenting the silver screen as a shield between the viewer and his/her own repressed nature -- a hall of mirrors which needs to be shattered, no matter the cost, if we are to reconnect our fragmented selves and forge an honest bond with something Other. Bestaire may be quiet, meditative, but every so often a gaze smashes through the screen like a gunshot, and momentarily there's harmony.
the dream the two films share is of a world that no longer requires cinema; a world where every living thing can exist in its natural state, no longer forced into hiding by external forces, no longer pressured to escape into the theater's array of delusions and facades. what is moviegoing if not the desire to fleetingly, repeatedly, become like someone in love, like someone who can feel without it being filtered through a prism of defense mechanisms? what is cinema if not a dream of freedom?'
now we have a sequel in which the animals break out of the cage and right through the screen, if only for a few moments.
12) Parasite (Dir. Boon Joon-Ho)
high and low and lower still. i keep thinking about the rich boy, scrawling his schizoid art and whirling maniacally around the periphery of the frame as though poking for holes in this eerie paradise. eventually he's front and centre, huddled in his makeshift tee-pee whilst mum and dad fornicate over the stench of the exploited, frantically communing with the ghost in the basement, disturbed perhaps by a gnawing realisation that his life is built on the graves of the unseen unfortunate.
11) Knives and Skin (Dir. Jennifer Reeder)
an attempt to reclaim or rearrange the old tropes and songs which at its worst can be as self-consciously performative and provocative as your everyday feminist student film (vaginal imagery abounds), but lord knows i can't resist a damaged distaff Twin Peaks* deathdream of dissolves and synths and freaky costumes that looks like it was lit entirely by lava lamps.
*or River's Edge according to reeder, as if i wasn't already desperate to see that
for a long while now asian action movies have largely been more ruthless, uninhibited and angry than their western counterparts, and this covertly scornful riff on The Dark Knight courtesy of herman yau (Ebola Syndrome) is no different. it's a pleasure seeing andy lau as a duterte-sympathising batman and louis motherfuckin’ koo in the joker role, but the unchecked, destructive machismo of their crowning chase scene colours the preceding power games a remarkably ugly hue. (no need to have seen the first film--like a lot of asian sequels this one's only related thematically, not narratively).
24) Hotel by the River (Dir. Hong Sang-Soo)
hong has entered a particularly bleak, self-excoriating phase off the back of his high profile affair, and given it was followed by the first full year not to have a hong premiere since 2007, i wonder if this direct confrontation with mortality represents some kind of endpoint. poet, dreamer and aesthete, drunkard, absent parent and possibly the "worst person in the world"--it goes without saying that this is another hong stand-in, and his fate is treated with an appropriate ambivalence, not without its snowy pathos but also seeming the logical culmination of the man's worst qualities. the final shot is pointed, the film's equivalent of the taxi shot in The Day After or the entirety of On the Beach at Night Alone, suggesting that while the old man is unable to imagine anyone but himself as the protagonist of this story, and the love interest doesn't even warrant a presence, maybe it's kim min-hee who's more worthy of our interest and compassion.
23) Relaxer (Dir. Joel Potrykus)
a gross single-setting slacker comedy about a pathologically inert wastrel desperate to beat billy mitchell’s fraudulent pacman world record before the y2k apocalypse, this is potrykus' retardo The Exterminating Angel (with refs to Rear Window, Videodrome, Robinson Crusoe etc) and an ideal vehicle for burge, who continues to emerge as an anti-buster keaton for the couch potato era. potrykus makes degenerate manchild movies of the best kind, the line always blurred between tribute and critique.
22) Bait (Dir. Mark Jenkin)
“shit pub anyways. don’t even play winner stays on no more.” a scratched up DIY oddity about the gentrification of a cornish fishing village shot on 16mm with a handcranked vintage camera, like if ben rivers made a melodrama in the visual language of griffith and eisenstein but with a droll, rude humor that could only come from working class britain. it's really fun and makes experimental filmmaking seem as salt-of-the-earth as rigging a boat for the day’s catch.
21) High Flying Bird (Dir. Steven Soderbergh)
if this movie were a current basketball team it’d be the rockets, but i’m a rockets fan. nobody is making movies more sterile, transactional and defiantly digital, mirroring the structures and aesthetics of the system he’s critiquing with a cold precision that makes even the likes of mann and johnnie to seem antiquated. dude is so fucking smart--some might say to a fault--but the twist confirms that he's still making romantic heist movies, only now driven exclusively by political fury and sorrow.
20) High Life (Dir. Claire Denis)
even by denis' standards this film is positively fertile, exploring matters of sexuality, reproduction, rape and even incest amongst the occupants of a phallic/fetal ship adrift in an unending womb full of tantalising black holes. a fucked up adam and eve story (complete with its own little garden of eden) with the final line "shall we?" potentially a callback to the very first line "taboo", an invitation to transgress in a way that might actually be truer to the mission's original objectives of exploring and transcending boundaries.
19) The Art of Self-Defense (Dir. Riley Stearns)
AKA The Killing of a Sacred Dachshund or a deadpan Fight Club. the third act and its tidy denouement make stearns' deficiencies abundantly clear, but i just can't resist all these exquisitely-pitched lanthimosy shenanigans enough to rank it objectively. easily one of the funniest movies of the last couple years.
18) The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (Dir. Kathleen Hepburn, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers)
an intimate pseudo-single take two-hander covering the immediate aftermath of an indigenous woman’s domestic abuse and a wealthier, “whiter” indigenous woman’s attempt to help. wise, unflinching, unresolved filmmaking, sidestepping the traps these premises usually fall into; i was so sure a misguided climactic confrontation or reconciliation over a certain plot point was coming that i near whooped with delight when the credits rolled. no backstories, no sugarcoating, no bullshit. thing is perfectly judged, catch it on netflix.
17) The Plagiarists (Dir. 'Peter Parlow')
attributed to a fictitious director, this hilarious and ingenious meta-comedy buries into the pomo landscape in ways few films dare, formalising the increasingly slippery nature of concepts like "authenticity", "originality" and "intellectual property" through what at first glance seems a classic american indie set-up about a pretentious, bickering white couple suffering a flat in the middle of nowhere. it's a real tricky film to get a handle on in the moment, thrillingly unstable as it constantly evaluates and reevaluates itself. if "post-mumblecore" wasn't a thing already, it is now.
16) Doctor Sleep (Dir. Mike Flanagan)
for all its messiness (i’d offer that mapping the terrain of the adolescent mind requires some play amongst the work) and a slightly vanilla lead performance (not that it isn't affectingly pensive, but i wish i really believed in his potential to follow in his father's footsteps), a smart, deeply felt adaptation which understands that danny’s redemption from generational trauma doubles as a reconciliation between king’s story and kubrick’s brutal bastardisation, deliberately thawing the latter against the wishes of fanboys everywhere. there's a moving symmetry between the way this ends and king's remarkable response to their screening: "you've warmed my feelings toward the kubrick film."
15) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Dir. Quentin Tarantino)
almost a shame he’s making one more, 'cause this plays like a swansong and ends on his most sublime and definitive image: a hushed ascent into hollywood heaven which illustrates how, like any zealot, he’s forever chasing ghosts. it’s worst when he’s blaming the loss of his rosebud on the rise of liberal resentment, this tearing down of great values and institutions of the past due to their ‘problematic’ baggage, but thankfully the love and grief mostly shine through the bitterness.
14) Knife + Heart (Dir. Yann Gonzalez)
could easily be called head + heart for how it achieves the best of both worlds, imbuing its images with an eroticism and mysticism rarely seen since the heyday of giallo and euro-horror while also having enough critical distance to contextualise them, coax out meaning from the sensory overload. it never feels like boring, snooty academic deconstruction nor slavish homage but rather a new and thoroughly queer voice in the conversation.
13) Glass (Dir. M. Night Shyalaman)
my review of Bestaire seven years ago:
'i'm reminded of Like Someone In Love another claustrophobic film presenting the silver screen as a shield between the viewer and his/her own repressed nature -- a hall of mirrors which needs to be shattered, no matter the cost, if we are to reconnect our fragmented selves and forge an honest bond with something Other. Bestaire may be quiet, meditative, but every so often a gaze smashes through the screen like a gunshot, and momentarily there's harmony.
the dream the two films share is of a world that no longer requires cinema; a world where every living thing can exist in its natural state, no longer forced into hiding by external forces, no longer pressured to escape into the theater's array of delusions and facades. what is moviegoing if not the desire to fleetingly, repeatedly, become like someone in love, like someone who can feel without it being filtered through a prism of defense mechanisms? what is cinema if not a dream of freedom?'
now we have a sequel in which the animals break out of the cage and right through the screen, if only for a few moments.
12) Parasite (Dir. Boon Joon-Ho)
high and low and lower still. i keep thinking about the rich boy, scrawling his schizoid art and whirling maniacally around the periphery of the frame as though poking for holes in this eerie paradise. eventually he's front and centre, huddled in his makeshift tee-pee whilst mum and dad fornicate over the stench of the exploited, frantically communing with the ghost in the basement, disturbed perhaps by a gnawing realisation that his life is built on the graves of the unseen unfortunate.
11) Knives and Skin (Dir. Jennifer Reeder)
an attempt to reclaim or rearrange the old tropes and songs which at its worst can be as self-consciously performative and provocative as your everyday feminist student film (vaginal imagery abounds), but lord knows i can't resist a damaged distaff Twin Peaks* deathdream of dissolves and synths and freaky costumes that looks like it was lit entirely by lava lamps.
*or River's Edge according to reeder, as if i wasn't already desperate to see that
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Damn and that was just the foreplay. Awesome seeing The Art of Self-Defense in there, or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood so high up, or Parasite not even in your top 10 given the praise being heaped on it, The White Storm 2 and Bait both look awesome never heard of them, and I would have watched The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open if I knew it was 2019. Will try to check that out before this ends.
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Would love to know what you think of Crispin's performance in that particular one lmao.
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